RavensDagger

  Chapter Thirty-Six - Somewhat Fragile

  Spaceships were always exceptionally fragile things. It was hard for the yperson to uand that, sometimes.

  They'd look up and see a kilometre-long warship, all swooping angles and bristling guns, and think that it would take an act of God to rip that apart.

  The engineers and spacers, however, khe truth of it.

  Sp a metre-thick brick of pure depleted uranium on the end of your ship? Watch it bee one of the marbles in a on's cradle as the block is rammed by a tungsten rod going a full pert of C. You'll see the bri the other side of the ship leap out iy space, because servation of energy was a right pain in the ass sometimes.

  Kiiergy and momentum; they're the swinging pendulums of space warfare. Big, juicy vulnerabilities, right out there in front where everyone could see.

  So what does one do wheon wants to do nothing more than squeeze your ship's metaphorical weaknesses in a vice?

  You cover up, that's what.

  At the o of the First Intersystem War, shielding teology was still at its infancy. Evasion was the order of the day. That, or carry a rge rock with you to suck up some of the damage.

  By the end of the war, three new forms of shielding had been ied and were rag to prominence.

  Depending on the budget, a modern ship might have owo, or all three installed onboard, and that wasn't including point-defend anti-debris systems.

  Energy shielding was the most on a trustworthy of these systems. The yperson's expnation for how they worked was simple. A geor, usually oerior of the ship, would create a ft pne of carefully trolled eles in a ttice. These would be 'hardened' by pushing more energy into them. They'd essentially create a quasi-physical barrier oerior of the ship, and by overpping these aire vessel could be covered.

  They'd bounce mieteors a at the first graze from a ser.

  Deflector shields were a more expeion that required a fair amount of 'empty' space around a ship. The deflectors were small gravitational engines. Stupidly powerful and utterly useless at moving a ship.

  The shields were supposed to be a new form of engine when they were first ied. A way to 'grab' onto space itself and pull a ship through it with invisible oars.

  That had failed miserably, but the failures were iing and reproducible.

  A well-tuned deflector shield created a metres-thick zone where anything weighing more than an atom was sheared in a specific dire, usually away from the ship hiding behind the shield.

  Perfect for no-selling lighter kiic onry, but impossible to use in tight formations and you could fet having a deflector on while approag a station or another ship to dock.

  Again, ht useless against pure energy ons.

  Which was where the third and fa shield systems came in. Everyone called them bubble shields, because that's what they looked like. Thin, mostly translut bubbles where light was ed ever so slightly into an oil-slick sheen. They made a ship glow. They bounced energy ons like tossing a pebble at a tank. A plete no-sell of one of the most effective ons systems in the system and a major upset he end of the First Intersystem war.

  Some historians cimed that they were responsible for Mars not being pletely wiped away by the end of the war. A miracle of sd a secret still carefully guarded to this day by bckboxed systems and a full stific bckout

  All the rich kids with the fancy billion-dolr rag yachts had them. Everyone else crossed their fingers and hoped that the enemy wasn't pag too many energy ons.

  The Held Together did not have a bubble shield geor. It could never afford deflector shields. What it did have were a set of energy shields from the inter-eriod that covered its fnks, bottom, and top with four bluish squares that were even now dist and rippling as debris and stray point-defence fire nced out from the pirate station and the ships around them.

  The situation had turned into what Ivil might charitably describe as a mild clusterfuck.

  She had expected that things would be... plicated for the pirates. She hadn't expected for some of them to see this as an opportunity.

  Soon after the Sappho us first volley of torpedoes, a corvette had turned around and unleashed a full broadside into airely ued destroyer. The destroyer's shields had eaten most of the shots, but it still took some damage from the attack. So it retaliated by obliterating the smaller ship in a deluge of cle fire that left the corvette as nothing more than a shapely hulk that promptly ran into another ship.

  There were, she suspected, about a geion's worth es being called out and paid for at the moment in a most violent way.

  It was a good thing, in one respect. Pirates busy shooting each other were too busy to go after them.

  In another respect, it was someroblematic, because she intended for the Held Together to not die an inglorious death and she had expected to be the tre of the pirate's attention for a while. This chaos was so unfocused that there was a very real ce that the vulnerable old heap of junk would be batted aside like an annoying fly by some debris of stray fire.

  Ivil focused hard, her many powers reag out across the void to flick ks of ship aside and turn away turrets before they could get a bead on the Held Together's inviting rear.

  "Is she still okay?" Twenty-Six asked. There was no missing the naked worry in her voice.

  "She's holding on," Missy said, her eyes glued onto her readouts. "Don't worry about her, she'll be fine. Hell, she'll have a whole host of new problems for you to look at, even."

  Twenty-Six chuckled, but it sounded a little wet, close to tears.

  "I'm certain the ship and her crew will be fine," Aurora said. "My father--a somewhat wise man--always told me that one ought to only cry ohe worst has happened, not when it is merely at the doorstep. Until then, there is only hope, and hope is a dirty fighter."

  Ivil g Aurora aed the urge to smile. That had e out as... "Your father sounds a little more crude than I expected to hear," Ivil said.

  Aurora sniffed, her nostrils rising to the defense. "My father is a noble, but he's from a geion that grew up when Phobos was at its lowest. He has seen hardships enough to make other men break. If he is sometimes uncouth, then that is merely an artefact of the hardships he has faced and not a demerit on his nobility."

  Ivil made a mental o pursue that line of reasoning ter. It seemed like Aurora had some history with her family and it might be iing to see where that all led. In the meantime, however, there were other matters of greater import. "Missy, we see who is targeting whom?"

  "I... yeah, I think so. This ship's targeting software's leagues ahead of anything I've ever worked with. Looks like... a lot of people are targeting a lot of others, ourselves included. Not too many fog on the Held Together though. I think a lot of targeting profiles might be retaliatory? The ship's puting targets for everyohat aims at us."

  "And the Held Together doesn't have anything to target," Twenty-Six said.

  "Not even point defence guns? Anti-meteor ons?" Ivil asked. On ships with less performant shields, those were the old norm for knog small threats away. They were usually too weak to be sidered a true on, and modern munitions could outmanoeuvre and had built-io fuse anything but top-grade military point defence. She had heard stories of intrepid crews using their anti-meteor sers as ons to take out greedy and incautious pirates.

  Twenty-Six winced. "Ah, well, we have one? But it's... kinda been broken... for about a year or two."

  "Fantastic," Aurora said ftly.

  Ivil checked the distance ter. They had accelerated for a few mio a speed that she found rather reaso the moment they were cruising along, no longer accelerating. Every mihat passed increased the distaween the Sappho and the station by a little more.

  "We're going to be outside of kii range in a minute," Ivil said. "And the Held Together is just a dozen kilometres behind. I think we calm down a little."

  Twenty-Six let out a sigh of relief, though Ivil could tell that there was still some tension there. She'd likely only calm dowhey were truly safe.

  "Aurora, Missy, do you think you establish somerivate s with the Held Together?" Ivil asked.

  "Reasonable enough," Missy said. "But before that, we o figure something out."

  "And what's that?" Ivil asked, genuinely curious. She noticed Missy and Auriving each other a look, then Missy refocused on her.

  "We o decide who's in charge of this ship, and of our little two-ship operation."

  ***

  RavensDagger

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